Organized big business and the government basically upheld the same opinions concerning this action: Belgium being a small open, exporting economy, it could only survive by maintaining stable monetary parities (radically excluding any devaluation of the Belgian franc, till 1935), by defending free trade (even if the Belgian authorities themselves were obliged to take some, albeit moderate, protectionist steps), by pursuing internal deflation and balanced budgets. Nevertheless, these traditional methods were only one aspect of the state's economie activity Juring this period. Due to the severity of the crisis, major parts of the economic structure were on the verge of collapse. Consequently, the state was dragged in a whole new series of interventions: financial aid systems, credit enlargements, stimulation of cartellization, enactment of new legal regulations, organisation of suppletive economie functions, etc. All these measures can be characterized as an « external » framework, intended to secure a safe working of the capitalist system. A second stage in state interventionism, directly influencing the internal mechanisms and modalities of investment, production and consumption, was not reached in Belgium before World War II.

Marxism has been for a long time the reference of the European Worker's Movement. It took the form of a millenarist faith and was embodied in large organizations. Orthodox marxism had no more reason for existence when the working class was integrated in the modern society. Communism gave a new inspiration but at the expense of an intellectual degeneration. When it became a state religion, marxism stopped to be creative and became a Gnosis. The varied forms of leftisms which emerged in the sixties are the last avatar of marxism in the developped countries. But they have only a remote relationship with Marx's doctrine. The same process took place in the Third World where the marxist-leninist vulgate was absorbed by nationalism.

Ten years after the first effort (Res Publica, 1975, nr. 3, 413-432), this second article compares a number of english political science publications about Belgium. Twenty-five contributions (between 1976 and1986) are questioned on two grounds. First, what is their information value for a non-Belgian audience. Except for a few striking factual errors, the quality of the books and articles ranges from reasonable toexcellent. The second question, on the surplus value for Belgians themselves, provides a less optimistic image. There is evidence of very little theory building activities in this last decade. The key-authors of theprevious period do not have successors. Also, in contrast to the earlier period, the « politics of accommodation » and « pillarization » issues are abandoned in nearly exclusive favor of the language problem. Monotony has taken the place of diversity.

The sociography of the Belgian post-war minister is characterized by an upper middle-class or middle-class origin, a French-speaking and male preponderance and a university-education. The most frequent professional occupations are lawyer, professor and executive. The political career which led to a ministerial post, went in the first place through the legislative body (city-council, county-council and parliament) (the legislative type) and in the second place through thepolitical parties (the national and district-party-leader). After their ministerial career 39 % of the ministers played a promine part in the parliament; 35 %, however, prosecuted an extra-parliamentary and prestigious « after-function ». The Belgian ministerial career pattern bears some resemblances to the Dutch, German and French career pattern, but also many differences. The most outstanding difference is the importance of the bureaucratic component in the structure of the ministerial elite in those three countries, where in Belgium this is not very important.

During the last two decades, the yearly number of university graduates has more than doubled. Many of those graduates have been employed in the public sector. In the recruitment policy of the Belgian ministries, some tendencies can be discovered. First of all, the recruitment of university graduates increases, while as the number of internal promotions decreases. Like in other employment sectors, the public sector as well is asking for higher educational qualifications. Secondly, the central administration is recruiting more and more for specific grades instead of general grades. This reffrcts among other things the growing complexity of administrative practice. Thirdly, the recruitment philosophy is changing. While as in earlier times knowledge was emphasised, nowadays the learning capacity of people is stressed. Finally, since the eighties, a lot of university graduates are employed in non-academic jobs. T his, of course, is due to the effects of economic crisis on the labour market.

Despite major institutional and political changes in the Belgian political system in the last 25 years, the electoral organization has been very stable. The adaptations of the electoral organization have even been less in the province of Brabant, although the political developments have caused there additional problems. Brabant's electoral constituencies contain a rather strange mixture of heterogeneous electorates: (1) a constituency, which consists of the bilingual capital Brussels as well as several Flemish communes, (2) a unilingual Walloon constituency, (3) a unilingual Flemish constituency. The proposed solutions for Brabant's complex situation can be summarized into six alternative systems of electoral organization, concentrating either on the functioning of the system of provincial allotment (II, III, IV: to prevent the election of a candidate from one language community in the unilingual constituency that is part of the other language community), or on a radical redrawing of the boundaries of the electoral constituencies (V, VI, VII: to separate theFlemish and French electorale more neatly). The impact of the six alternatives on the seats distribution among the political parties is rather restricted. The shifts of seats inside the parties (from one constituency to another) are more striking than between the parties. Alternatives IV and VI cause the largest reallocation of seats between the parties, whereas alternatives II, III and V result in only minor changes.